The Cross-Community Environmental Awareness Project Team Building with Unicity

Successfully building links between communities and raising environmental awareness.

The BeginningOn 3rd February, Making Teams's community environmental project took place at Oonrak Primary School. The project was designed by Making Teams to allow all participants, regardless of age or background, to work together in a series of 'hands-on' challenges which promote the 3R (Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle) concept.

The Day
The event involved guests from Unicity in Germany, children and teachers from Oonrak, Thepparat and Wat Sawang-arom schools, and staff from Fair House Villas and Spa, The Imperial Samui, Miskawaan Luxury Beachfront Villas, Paradise Beach Resort, and Rocky's Boutique Resort.

John Ens, Chairman of The Thai Hotels Association (Southern Chapter, East Coast) Green Commitee, gave a presentation to adult participants about the Low Carbon School Project, Bio-fertilisers and many other topics related to Samui's environment. While at the same time, Marion Seipe from Divers in Paradise gave a presentation to all the children on sea-life and what we can do to keep our seas clean. Marion presented in both English and German, and the talk was translated into Thai by Khun Nuanchawee of Oonrak School.

After the presentations, musician Zach Sukuweh impressed everybody, first with his performance on didgeridoo, then by leading a sing-a-long of an improvised song "Reduce, Re-use, Recycle". This was accompanied by drumming on plastic bottles!

There were also static displays of goods made from recycled materials made by children at local schools and staff at local hotels, and some innovative technologies that made use of recycled materials and renewable energies, for example a solar stove made from a discarded umbrella and aluminium foil, and a solar water heater made from pipes and old plastic bottles.

Another static display was hosted by Samui Robot Gallery, showing some of the metal creations they had made.

There was an environmental quiz (which involved a bit of running around too!) and the day ended with a timed challenge - to make something useful and something educational using recycled materials. All teams managed to do so successfully, and all educational material was given to Oonrak school to use and display.

The event proved to be both educational and fun, as hopefully future events will be too!